May Day marchers demand immigration reform in downtown L.A.

LOS ANGELES -- Yolanda Araujo stood at the front of a crowd of May Day marchers downtown Wednesday carrying a cardboard sign bearing the words "Resident Alien."

The words represented something more than the 1,000 other demonstrators gathered with her demanded - a chance for millions of undocumented immigrants to be able to identify themselves as legal residents, and eventually, as American citizens.

"We want legalization today, without discrimination," she said in Spanish as she walked along Broadway. "We are not criminals. We are people that are fighting for a better life."

Araujo's sign was a little different from the kind of placard typically carried by marchers. A square hole cut into the cardboard made the sign resemble an oversized ID card. She carried it, her face showing through the cutaway as if it were her own card.

Araujo was not alone Wednesday. She and the hundreds of other demonstrators marched on Southern California streets Wednesday to demand the president and Congress pass legislation that would allow the more than 11 million undocumented immigrants believed to be living in the United States apply for citizenship.

Los Angeles police estimated 1,200 had arrived for the May Day demonstration when the day's march began early Wednesday. Hundreds more assembled in downtown San Bernardino, about 60 miles to the east, to deliver the same message.

At another rally, in Brea, about two dozen people gathered to insist that politicians do just the opposite - refuse citizenship to those who entered the country illegally and strictly enforce immigration laws.

"We're here to stop the Obama administration, President Obama and the 'Gang of Eight' with proposals of amnesty, which is the same old rhetoric, again," said Raymond Herrera, founder of We The People California's Crusader, which organized the Brea event.

The Los Angeles, San Bernardino and Brea events took place amid widespread expectations that Congress will act this year on major immigration reform. The Gang of Eight, a group of Democratic and Republican senators that includes speculative GOP presidential candidate Marco Rubio has introduced a bill that contains proposals known as the DREAM Act. The legislation would allow people who were brought into the country illegally before reaching the age of 16 to become naturalized citizens in five years if they have a high school diploma or GED.

More controversially, the Gang of Eight's bill also provides for other otherwise law-abiding undocumented immigrants to receive provisional legal status and eventually become citizens after waiting more than a decade and paying fines and back taxes.

On the enforcement side, the Senate bill would require employers to use E-Verify, an online system, to make sure job applicants are eligible to work in this country. The bill would also require the Department of Homeland Security to draft new border fencing and security strategies, among many other provisions.

But it was the prospect of a more generous immigration policy that motivated most of the people who took to the streets on Wednesday.

Listen, Obama!

"Obama, Escucha. Estamos en la lucha," demonstrators in San Bernardino shouted during their mid-afternoon march through the city's core.

In English, the San Bernardino marchers' cries translated to "Obama, listen. We are in the fight."

Those in San Bernardino included Jose Gutierrez, now 43, who was brought to the United States illegally more than three decades ago by his mother.

"I still kind of remember being put into the trunk of a car," said Gutierrez as he walked alongside his wife, Shena Gutierrez, and their two young children.

He grew up in Southern California, where he went through school and worked in the United States most of his life while not really knowing he was in the country illegally, he said.

"I didn't really know I was illegal," he said.

Gutierrez, who has been allowed to stay in the U.S. temporarily, has been deported once before, but his family worries he will be deported again.

In Los Angeles, many of those who gathered around Broadway waved American flags as they waited for the May Day events to begin. A smaller number of demonstrators held aloft the flags of Mexico and other Latin American nations.

One man, Efrain Iniguez of Wilmington, arrived at the march with a stuffed E.T. and a pair of toy aliens wearing T-shirts, one in English, the other in Spanish, with the message "I don't want to be an alien. I want to be legal."

Some of the Los Angeles marchers danced while others chanted "Si se puede" or other phrases when the march along Broadway began shortly after 1 p.m. Wednesday.

LAPD Officer Michael Liebe said an estimated 1,200 people were on the scene in the early hours of the march.

There were no reports of the kind of chaos that broke out in May Day 2007 in Los Angeles' MacArthur Park when police clashed with demonstrators.

By 6 p.m., LAPD Sgt. Rudy Lopez said no arrests had been made.

"It's been a very calm, peaceful and very well organized event," he said, adding the crowd size was less than in past years.

A different outcome?

May Day, historically associated with the labor movement and celebrated as a workers' holiday outside the United States, has evolved into a day when immigrants and their allies gather for protest rallies to demand Congress grant citizenship to undocumented migrants.

This year marks the first time since 2007 when the policies known as "comprehensive immigration reform" have risen to the top of Washington's agenda. Although President George W. Bush supported immigration reforms in his second term, proposals that then also included a path to citizenship failed in the face of stiff opposition from more conservative elements of Bush's Republican Party.

Now, the marchers and their allies hope for a different outcome.

"Congress has changed their hearts of stone," said Gloria Godoy, a Guatemalan native and founder of the group Organizacion Atescatempa. "They have realized that we Latinos are people of honor, that we work hard, and that we contribute to the economy."

Godoy, 49, of Los Angeles, held an American flag close and said she became a citizen eight years ago.

"We were once foreigners and now we're here," she said. "This is our country. This is our flag. This is the country I defend."

On the other side of the issue, one concern is about the effect reforms would have on labor markets.

Numbers USA, a group that opposes any plans to allow undocumented immigrants to become legal, estimated current proposals would allow about 33 million people to immigrate to the United States in the first decade after the reforms would be enacted.

The group's president, Roy Beck, predicted that an influx of new immigrants nearly equal to the entire population of California would flood labor markets and depress wages.

"It's going to drive people in the lower-middle class (out.) They're going to leave the middle class," Beck said.

Any undocumented immigrants who gain citizenship through the proposals being considered will not escape poverty, Beck predicted.

Latino voters' increased clout is widely perceived as a key reason immigration has risen to the top of Washington's agenda. Republican 2012 presidential candidate Mitt Romney's weak support from Latino voters has many pundits and politicians predicting that conservative Republicans in Congress will soften their traditional opposition to any policies that would allow those who entered the United States illegally to become citizens.

Said marcher Juan Martinez: "We put Obama in office twice."

The upshot is that although Democrats are more likely than Republican to make immigration reform a priority, Democratic supporters of the current bill are counting upon their rivals' self-preservation instincts to get the Gang of Eight's bill, or something like it, to Obama's desk.

"I think more savvy political leaders get the idea that it would probably be beneficial for them to get on board with immigration reform," Rep. Linda Sanchez, D-Cerritos, said in a recent interview.